African Art Works Of Power Beauty

To understand African art and the people one has to take the history
of Africa seriously, this requires careful and cautious scrutiny of
African culture and tradition.

The fascinating new breakthroughs in archaeological and
anthropological investigations into African art, empires and
societies, scientifically proves that the past great cultures of
sub-Sahara Africa - Nok, Igbo, Benin, Akan Zimbabwe and South Africa
(Mapungubwe) amongst other represented complex societies and during
the same period great parts of Europe were still living in the dark
ages. Bearing the above in mind Africans and people from around the
world are now better able to appreciate the complex diversity and
incredible creativity of past and present African civilizations.

To shed light on the above it is important to understand how the
western world portrays Africa past and present. Historians, a few
artists, the media, amongst others still continue to willfully
delude the masses by scant references to Africa however, no one can
erase the facts from the pages of history. A history we as Africans
should be proud of, a history that we as Africans should rewrite in
order to set the record straight.

Here are some of the blatant untruths of the past.

David Hume during the middle of the 18th century wrote and
maintained, "That one can survey the
length and breadth of sub-Sahara Africa and find not even one work
of visual or written art worthy of the name". Hume went further and
wrote in the second edition of his book "That all of black Africa
contained no arts, no sciences".

Ten years later Immanuel Kant wrote in an essay "blackness
denotes not only ugliness but stupidity as well".

It was only in 1937 after years of denial that Picasso in a
conversation with Andre Malraux not reported publicly until 1974
admitted the African presence in his work.

Pablo Picasso stated: "I have felt my strongest artistic emotions,
when suddenly confronted with the sublime beauty of sculptures
executed by the anonymous artists of Africa. These works of a
religious passionate, and rigorously logical art are the most
powerful and most beautiful things the human imagination has ever
produced. I hasten to add that, nevertheless, I detest exoticism".

It is now an accepted fact that African art
resuscitated European art that was dying a slow death from a lack of
creative ability. It is beyond a shadow of a doubt that African art
inspired Europe to the eventual birth of Modern Art.